The impact of marketing silos on your agency’s SEO and communication efforts

Thomas LAPORTE • 15 March 2023 • 17 min read
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Silo business: when isolated marketing teams kill your agency’s communication

If you’re an SEO director, SEO consultant, or digital marketer working in an agency, then you have probably heard of so-called silo marketing.

This increasingly popular term deals with marketing departments that operate in an isolated way, struggle to communicate with each other, and impact negatively their whole agency or company.

But what are exactly silos in business and how do they impact your organization’s overall marketing strategy?

In this guide, we’ll go over how to spot marketing silos, their impact on critical areas such as SEO and communication, and the strategies you can use to break them down once and for all.

Let’s start with a simple definition of marketing silos:

What are silos in business?

A business silo is a department or team inside an organization (like a communication agency, for instance) that struggles to cooperate with other teams and departments, and often doesn’t share critical information with them.

For instance, you can think of business silos as scattered islands inside your organization, with difficult and fuzzy communication from one beach to the other.

Well, when business silos concern your marketing teams, they’re called marketing silos, and they’re a problem your organization doesn’t really wish to deal with.

Indeed, the lack of communication caused by marketing silos puts your agency or business at risk, hinders your business procedures, and harms your whole marketing strategy.

But let’s go over how marketing silos impact two of most organizations’ critical areas, SEO and communication:

The negative impact of marketing silos on SEO

A business silo is a department or team inside an organization that struggles to cooperate with other teams and departments,

Whether your goal is to improve your online presence, generate leads or drive engagement to your online assets, a well-planned SEO strategy is a must.

However, when your teams struggle to cooperate as in silo marketing, your SEO efforts may be critically affected and you may have a hard time trying to rank high in Google’s SERPs.

So let’s go over the topic in detail and see how marketing silos can really affect your SEO.

Here are three of the most common ways isolated teams hinder your SEO efforts:

1. Marketing silos prevent the sharing of SEO knowledge

Marketing silos hinder the sharing of SEO knowledge and best practices, which can lead to missed opportunities to improve your organization’s website’s rankings. 

Each siloed team may be missing out on their fellow teams’ newly-adopted SEO tactics, which may result in marketing silos going at different paces, and – in the worst of cases – in different directions.

2. Isolated teams lead to duplicated efforts and inefficiencies

Without open communication and collaboration, silo teams may waste time and resources by duplicating efforts

This can be especially harmful to SEO, as it is a dynamic and difficult area to take care of, that requires constant attention and care from many of your organization’s marketing professionals.

Without coordinated efforts, your SEO game is likely to hit a snag.

3. Marketing silos can limit teamwork

Marketing silos can limit cross-functional teamwork, preventing teams from learning from each other and improving their skills. 

This can result in a lack of innovation and creativity, which can prevent your professionals from going the extra mile in creating out-of-the-box tactics to improve your SEO. 

The negative impact of marketing silos on communication

A lack of internal communication will likely result in damage to the efficiency of your organization’s communicative strategy.

Precisely, here’s how marketing silos can affect your agency or company’s communication:

1. Marketing silos can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts

Without open communication and collaboration, teams may have different goals, priorities, and expectations. 

This can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts, which can negatively impact your communication efforts. 

Siloed teams may also miss opportunities to coordinate messaging and create a cohesive brand identity, resulting in harmful damage to the way your organization communicates with its clients.

2. Isolated teams prevent the sharing of feedback and constructive criticism

Marketing silos can prevent the sharing of ideas, feedback, and constructive criticism. 

Not only this can limit creativity and innovation (as we have seen).

When teams work in isolation, they may also miss out on valuable feedback, which could help them improve their work. 

This way, marketing silos are likely to limit a business’s ability to develop both effective internal and external communication, resulting in invaluable damage to your organization’s procedures and plans.

Strategies for breaking down marketing silos

As we have seen so far, marketing silos stand at the root of many communicative and SEO problems your organization may face when building its marketing strategy.

However, the good news is that there are many strategies and best practices you can implement right now to either solve your silo marketing problem or avoid it in the first place.

Here are some ways you can break down your marketing silos once and for all:

1. Promote a culture of openness, trust, and respect

There can’t be effective communication without a culture of openness and mutual trust among your marketing professionals.

Factors like respect, empathy, and trust are a must for a cooperating and cohesive marketing team.

While this first point may seem trivial to you, today many more agencies and companies tend to overlook it, which is why we suggest you check if your efforts meet this requirement.

Do your employees or collaborators feel free to criticize your efforts or those of your coworkers?

Do all the people in your teams get along with each other, or do you know of any problems between some of its members?

You may promote a culture of openness by actively encouraging constructive feedback, and may contribute to developing a cohesive team by organizing team-building events.

Factors like respect, empathy, and trust are a must for a cooperating and cohesive marketing team.

2. Create cross-functional teams within your organization

Another effective strategy for breaking down marketing silos is to create cross-functional teams or committees to share information and resources. 

By bringing together employees from different departments, you can encourage collaboration and communication across the organization.

These cross-functional teams can work together on projects, share ideas, and provide feedback on each other’s work. 

This will likely help you break down the barriers between departments and promote a culture of cooperation and teamwork.

3. Use technology and tools to promote collaboration and communication

Taking advantage of the latest technology and tools may help you enhance communication among your teams and limit the risk of silo marketing.

For instance, you may use communication platforms such as Slack or Basecamp to allow your coworkers to access shared files and chatrooms for each of your projects.

Thanks to organized and easy-to-use platforms, you will be able to drastically reduce the risk of facing isolated teams that struggle to communicate with each other.

4. Align incentives and goals to encourage cross-functional teamwork

To further encourage cross-functional teamwork, it’s important you make sure you align incentives and goals across your organization. 

This means that all employees should be incentivized and rewarded for working together and achieving shared goals.

For example, you could create performance metrics that measure the success of cross-functional projects or reward employees who collaborate effectively with their peers. 

This may help you to break down the silos between departments and create a more collaborative and cooperative culture.

5. Measure and track progress in breaking down silos

As our last tip to fight the lack of communication among your teams, we suggest you accurately measure and track your progress in breaking down marketing silos. 

This means regularly monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics related to communication, collaboration, and teamwork.

By tracking progress in this way, you can identify areas where there are still silos or communication breakdowns and take steps to address these issues. 

This can help you to ensure that your agency’s SEO and communication efforts are optimized and that your employees are working together effectively to achieve shared goals.

Lock in your agency’s communication and SEO strategy

Marketing silos are a concrete danger that your organization may face when working on its SEO and communication efforts.

However, there’s much more that contributes to a well-structured, stable, and efficient SEO and communication over time.

If you’re looking to improve your online presence, drive more traffic to your website and build a stable online asset over time, then Getfluence is the help you need.

Getfluence is a global marketplace that allows you to collaborate with 10.000+ publishers all over the world, to spread content that promotes your brand in a natural, long-lasting, and cost-effective way.

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Unlike traditional advertising – which may result in an annoying or frustrating experience – Getfluence will help your public flow to your offerings in a genuine and natural way, thanks to their own interests, which will pull them toward your content.

This way, you will be able to:

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If you’re looking to improve your SEO, enhance your communication and reach your target audience in an effective way, then Getfluence is the answer you need.

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